


Funeral

by Alixtii



Series: Dark Champions [1]
Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Bathroom, Bechdel Fix, Episode: s05e22 Not Fade Away, Female Friendship, Female Protagonist, Funeral, Gen, Grieving, Los Angeles, Mourning, POV Alternating, POV Female Character, POV Male Character, POV Third Person, Past Tense, Post-Canon, Survivor Guilt, Waitress - Freeform, gen - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-03-26
Updated: 2004-03-26
Packaged: 2017-10-03 09:33:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16608
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alixtii/pseuds/Alixtii
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Illyria mourns alone. But she isn't the only one. Requiescat in pace.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Funeral

** _Illyria_ **

The sun rose on the Los Angeles alley, and Illyria was alone, surrounded by the dead remains of monstrous evil. But then, she had always been alone. If the ashes of Spike and Angel could be found among the corpses, or if they had found shelter from the dawn, she did not know. The body of Charles Gunn was to be found somewhere in the carnage, but she knew not where.

And, in the palace of Cyvus Vale, lay the body of Wesley Wyndam-Pryce, he who had been her guide in this strange world. Now she had lost even that sense of orientation. The building of the wolf, the ram, and the hart was shattered. She had no place to go, no mission for which to fight anymore. But then, she had always been alone.

When she had ruled this world and so many others like it, traveling from dimension to dimension as she pleased, she had always been alone. When you have power, after all, there is no one that you can trust; everyone wants to steal that power from you. She had lovers, and she had had generals, but she had never had a friend.

The shell had called these people friends, had called Wesley more than a friend, but now they were all fallen, and Illyria was alone, as she always would be.

* * * * *

She did not know why she went to the funeral. She felt she needed closure, some last moment in which to wish Wesley farewell. In any case, she went.

The mourners were a motley crew, with more than a few Shadowmen, for Wesley had once been a Shadowman, Illyria knew. Illyria remembered the Shadowmen, powerful humans with power over demonic forces. They had changed in the intervening millennia, it seemed, by quite a lot.

One of the Shadowmen was Wesley’s father, Roger Wyndam-Pryce, who had come with his wife Delores. He was a clearly powerful, intimidating man, and Illyria knew that Wesley had been afraid of him. Now Illyria wanted nothing more than to tear out the throat of this man who offered and received false condolences, to show him the might of the god-king Illyria. The Shadowmen, with their schemes and machinations, should have fallen down and worshipped her.

Another of the Shadowmen caught her interest. He said his name was Rupert Giles, and when he expressed his sympathy it was real feeling. He and Wesley had worked together, it seemed, some years ago. Rupert Giles looked at her oddly, as if he wandered how such a frail Texan could have survived the destruction of the wolf, the ram, and the hart when all else had fallen, but he said nothing.

And there was the tool of the Shadowmen, the Vampire Slayer, who had been created by them long after Illyria had been confined to the Deeper Well. Her name was Faith, and she burned with a rage that Illyria knew very well.

Soon, all left, the Shadowmen returning to their plans and their schemes, and the Slayer to her battle with evil. Perhaps Illyria would seek out this Slayer, and they would fight side by side. Perhaps, but for now Illyria was alone.

Alone in front of Wesley’s grave, Illyria let herself transform back from the form of the shell. This was who she was, not Winifred Burkle as all the Shadowmen had believed. And she was alone.

* * * * *  
__

** _Giles_ **

Giles heard from Roger Wyndam-Pryce about Wesley's death. The old man spoke of the death of his son matter-of-factly, in passing, in the same tone of voice he would have used if he were referring to the Council offices running out of coffee. It was a situation; it had to be dealt with.

Upon returning to his London flat, Giles called Faith. He had been her Watcher, after all; when Faith came out of her coma, it was Wesley that she tortured. A perverse connexion, perhaps, but one which he knew had been meaningful to both of them. When Wesley needed help, it was to Faith that he turned.

Wesley had been Buffy's Watcher, too, at least officially, but Giles did not even bother to call her.

He opened his notebook computer (a Mac, of course--Willow insisted on it) and began to make travel plans, for him to travel from London to Los Angeles, and for Faith to travel there from Cleveland. It was the latter set of plans which required more finesse, considering that she and not he was a fugitive from the law.

Within the week, then, Giles had returned to California, to the place where he had lived on and off for seven years, to the place which held so many painful memories for him, ready to add another to the list. He has traveled to the state many times before, but always before (with the exception of the first time, which had been so long ago, before Buffy, that it seemed to be in a different life, and the last, when he had brought the teenagers himself) there had been a contingent of rowdy adolescents waiting there to meet him.

This time, he was alone.

* * * * *

Giles was surprised at who was at Wesley's funeral, and who wasn't. Roger Wyndam-Pryce was there, of course, with his wife Delores, wearing the same interminable scorn which had graced his face for decades, and his contempt for his colleagues who came to wish farewell to his son was clear. This was his distasteful duty, he seemed to say; why would anyone else wish to travel across the globe to witness this culmination of his failure?

Still, there were other Watchers here; it seemed there were those in the Council who mourned his passing besides Giles. It surprised him to see how many had turned out; after all, Wesley Wyndam-Pryce was a twit when Giles had first known him. (He hated to think ill of the dead, but it _was_ the truth.) Later, when Wesley had matured, he had already quit the Council. Perhaps Wesley signified to them what they secretly wished to be themselves: an adventurer who fought for Good on his own terms, unobstructed by the weight of institutional bureaucracy.

Giles knew most of the Watchers, or at least could put their names to their faces. He remained mostly silent to them, however, and they treated him likewise. He wasn't one of them, not really, not anymore. He was like Wesley--alone.

Except Wesley hadn't been really alone, at least not until the end. He had had allies, friends. Angel. Charles Gunn. Krevlorneswath of the Deathwok Clan. Giles wondered where these people were now; had they all been destroyed in the collapse of Wolfram &amp; Hart? Why were they absent from the funeral of their friend and colleague?

The only person, it seemed, from that core team who had come to the funeral was one Miss Winifred Burkle. Her face was somber, and she kept looking to Wesley's open coffin as if to convince herself he was really dead. Giles made his way over to her, informed her quietly that he was sorry for her loss. "Thank you," she said, looking up at him with eyes full of a sorrow he had seen too many times. "I give you thanks."

Giles paused. He wanted to ask how she had survived the destruction of Wolfram &amp; Hart, where were her colleagues. But he saw the pain in her eyes, and knew that this was not the time. He passed on, leaving her alone.

* * * * *  
__

** _Faith_ **

Faith had just picked up her stake and was about to go out on patrol when the phone rang. It was Giles. "What's up, G'?" she asked.

"It's Wesley," he answered. "He's dead."

"Wes?" asked Faith, as if Giles would answer "Did I say Wesley? I meant an evil vampire everyone hated. Sorry about the confusion." "What happened?"

"According to his father, they found him in the Los Angeles mansion of a powerful—-and evil—-sorcerer named Cyvus Vale. The sorcerer's head was crushed in, and Wesley seemed to die from a stomach wound from a knife or dagger some such instrument."

It was not as if the last year had been devoid of death. Faith was a Vampire Slayer, after all, and she was used to those around her dying. Anya. The potentials. Spike. Somehow, though, she had taken to believing that people only died around her. Intellectually, she knew they—-Angel, Fred, Gunn—-continued fighting without her. Emotionally, she had believed that if she stayed away they would be safe. Suddenly, she found herself inextricably angry with Wesley. He should have died at her side. He was her Watcher, after all.

"The funeral will be Tuesday in L.A. Would you like to—"

"I'll go," she answered, hollowly. "Could you—"

"I'll make the travel arrangements," he agreed. Traveling half across the country while a wanted fugitive from the law required more finesse than Faith could manage. Her strategy would have been to hitchhike the entire way.

* * * * *

Most of the people at the funeral did whatever they could to avoid making eye contact with Faith. Not that she was surprised. Many of those attending were Watchers—-she could tell by the British accents and stuck-up attitudes—-and she was a Slayer. Of course, Slayers were a dime a dozen these days, thanks to that spell Willow cast, but she had been Slayer before that, and besides, she had made sure the Council would have stood up and taken noticed.

She had gone rogue.

_Rogue._ Even the word sounded ugly. Sure, she was a kick-ass X-man with a cool accent (Anna Paquin just wasn't up to it) and who could fly (Andrew once had gone on a spiel with an explanation involving Mystique—-who was that blue chick-—and someone named Miss Marvel, but Faith hadn't been able to keep up, nor had she wanted to). But while in prison, Faith had looked up what the word really meant. A rogue was a vagrant, a vagabond. Someone without a home, or friends.

Someone, in other words, who was all alone.

"Faith, perhaps some others would also like to pay their respects." Faith started out of her reverie, realized she had thought all of these things while staring into Wesley's coffin.

"I'm good, G'," Faith said to Giles, moving on in the line. The Watcher followed her.

"Where's Angel?" she asked him. "Why isn't he here?"

Giles actually took off his glasses and cleaned them with his handkerchief. Perhaps being around so many stiff Watchers had revived old habits—or perhaps it had been the year spent in London. "We know that the Wolfram &amp; Hart building has been destroyed," he answered. "A very selective earthquake. Beyond that, our intelligence is only slightly better than useless. Since that night—-the same night Wesley died-—Angel hasn't been heard from. Neither have any of his associates."

"There's Fred, over there," pointing at the petite physicist. "I don't see Gunn anywhere, though."

"Gun?" asked Giles, confused. "Ah, yes. Charles Gunn. The head of Wolfram and Hart's legal department. Formerly the head, I suppose."

"And not bad in a fight either." Where was he? Where was Angel? She knew they wouldn't miss Wesley's funeral, not if they could help it, even if an apocalypse was occurring at the same time. Which meant it was rather likely an apocalypse was occurring. Or _had_ occurred—-no, she banished the thought from her mind.

It wasn't right, though. Wesley should be mourned by his allies and colleagues, and instead they were nowhere to be found. Well, Fred was there, and Faith liked to think that she herself qualified, but still it wasn't enough. Angel should have been there. Without him, it was like Wesley was being buried alone.

* * * * *

Faith stood outside what used to be Wesley's apartment, tried the door. The knob resisted her efforts to turn it; it was, of course, locked. She turned harder, and suddenly the resistance was gone. Oh, well. It wasn't locked anymore, was it?

She stepped into the apartment which had been her first refuge after leaving prison. Angelus had battered her into a bloody pulp, and Wesley had taken her here. To his home.  
She stepped into his bathroom, into his bathtub. If she looked closely enough, she could see where the bathroom wall had been re-tiled.

That had been money wasted. She punched it, and then again, slamming her fists into the tile, watching it shatter until it was in as many pieces as it had been a year and a half ago. Even then, she didn't feel all that much better.

Suddenly, she heard a voice call out from the living room. "Um, is someone here?" It was a woman's voice, high-pitched, with a southern accent. Faith recognized the voice as Fred's without any difficulty.

"What if I had been someone dangerous?" asked Faith as she slipped back into the main room of Wesley's apartment. She was dangerous, of course. She had killed two men and who knew how many demons. Claiming to be reformed didn't make her less dangerous.

Fred shrugged. "I'd have screamed really loudly."

"And then they kill you."

"I can handle my own in a fight, Faith. I saw what happened to the door, though. I thought it might have been you."

Faith walked over to the wall. A one-dollar bill hung on it, held up by a dagger. "Guess I wasn't the only one to vandalize this place." On the dollar, in an elegant handwriting, was the name _Lilah Morgan_. Below that, in Wesley's distinctive script, was _Wesley Wyndam-Pryce_.

"Wesley put that there the night he went to face Vale," Fred explained. "He said he was going to do it for all of the women he had failed. For Lilah, for you, and—and me."

"Wes didn't fail me," Faith said, her voice firm. "Okay, he made some very bad decisions. But he was there for me when it counted. And you? What did he do to fail you?" Fred only looked at Faith, meeting the Slayer's gaze, refusing to answer.

Their eyes locked for a moment, the two of them together in the dead man's apartment staring into each other's eyes. For that moment, it seemed that Fred was the only other person in the world. But she knew in that moment that there was at least one other person who knew what she was going through, the pain, the burden. Then the moment passed, and Faith lowered her gaze.

"You miss him," said Fred. It wasn't a question.

Faith shrugged. "It's been a year and a half since I saw him, and I wasn't planning on dropping by L.A. anytime soon. But now that I'll never have the chance...yeah, I miss him."

She paused, then exhaled. She'd never really had this conversation with anyone, not even Giles, certainly not Wesley himself. Except maybe the prison shrink (to whom she had given a strongly edited version), who seemed to have been more interested in how Faith may have projected her own troubles with her father onto the young Watcher. (Troubles? What troubles? She was just as sure as ever that all of that psychobabble was utter nonsense. After all, hadn't Buffy's Into Psych professor released a demonoid creature who had tried to destroy the world? Faith did not have an Electra complex—-whatever that was.)

"Wesley was my Watcher," she explained. "He didn't approve of everything I did—-in fact, he approved of very little I did for most of my life. But that didn't matter. What mattered was that he bothered to have an opinion at all, that he paid attention no matter what. And now he's no longer watching, and you know what that means?"

"You are now alone."

"Yeah." Yeah, that was it. Didn't mean it didn't hurt to hear Fred say it.

"You grieve for him."

"Hell, yeah. My first Watcher died too, you know. Murdered by a vampire. I watched the blood be sucked out of her. And I cried. God, did I bawl. But that didn't bring her back. Nothing could bring her back. Except the vampiric blood Kakistos gave her. That was the worse part, seeing the demon which took up residence in her body. I had to stake her. And now, I'll never have another Watcher."

"They fear you."

"I guess I gave them reason, didn't I? After what I put Wesley through, I guess I shouldn't be surprised that no one's exactly clamoring for the job. But it means no one is watching anymore. No one cares. I fight alone from now on. Without an audience."

Faith walked over to the desk which stood in the corner of the room, examined the contents atop it. Next to what she was pretty sure was an Oracle of Illa and a copy of the Tradescan Codex, there was a group photograph of Wesley, Angel, Fred, Cordy, and Gunn in an expensive-looking wooden frame, but it had been turned around to face the wall. "Fred, where's Angel?" Faith asked. "Or Gunn? Lorne?"

"Charles is dead—I think," answered Fred, her voice low, looking at the picture in Faith's hand. "Lorne is—-gone. Angel and S—-I don't know where Angel is. If he is?"

"How can you live like that?" asked Faith. "Don't you want to do something? Find out?"

Fred looked at Faith, and suddenly Faith saw a sorrow in the physicist's eyes which until now she had only seen in her own reflection's eyes, or Buffy's. "Wesley is dead," said Fred. "That is all I need to know."

* * * * *  
__

** _ Illyria_ **

After the Vampire Slayer had left Wesley's apartment, Illyria did not transform back from the form of the shell immediately. Instead, she made her way into the bathroom, looked at the wreck of broken tile which had once been Wesley's bathtub and shower. Illyria knew the release that came from violence, the cartharsis of destruction and of pain. She had felt it in that final battle. The Slayer, apparently, found it in her mentor's bathroom.

But that was not the reason Illyria had entered the small room. She turned to the mirror which stood above the sink, looked at her reflection in it. Or, more accurately, Winifred Burkle's reflection. The face of the shell. She transformed back into her own visage, or rather what had been her visage since she had escaped from the Deeper Well. She remembered when the mere sight of her features would send minions running, so great and terrible it was. But all of that was gone.

She watched intently as her own eyes, hair, and forehead became blue. This was who she was now. Illyria the mockery. _Bluebird. A smurf. Babe the blue ox. Little Shiva. The blue meanie._ She who had once been god to a god—-

On a whim, she transformed again. Her forehead, hair, and eyes-—now they all were green. Then red. Then orange. Yellow. Purple. White. Back to blue. All mere modulations of her form. But no matter what color, the same eyes stared out from behind Illyria's face: the eyes of Winifred Burkle. Illyria could not escape those eyes which stared back at her no matter how she altered her appearance.

The Shadowmen had all been fooled by Illyria's guise, had believed her to be Winifred Burkle. Even Faith, who had met the real Fred, did not see through the ruse. The shell's own progenitors did not. But none of that changed anything, did it? Winifred Burkle was dead, her soul destroyed in the all-consuming Fires of Resurrection. And Illyria, who now inhabited her body, was her murderer. She was like the demon which had possessed the corpse of the first of the Shadowmen whom had gone to Faith, the woman she had first called Watcher. A creature to be hated and despised by all who had loved the shell.

The Burkle personality-—her mind, her soul-—was gone. And now her body-—the shell-—belonged to Illyria. She had taken it, with the amoral lack of concern she had done everything she had ever done. Want. Take. Have. That had been the way of the God-king of the Primordium, shaper of things. But no longer. She was not a vampire, and not a god. She was a . . . _human_. Even though she had only thought the word, she could still feel a bad taste in her (the shell's) mouth.

"The first thing a Watcher learns," Illyria had heard Wesley say (for _Watcher_ was the term that the Shadowmen now used to refer to themselves), "is to distinguish truth from illusion, because in a world of magicks that is the hardest thing to do."

Illyria let her leather garments dissipate, her features revert to Burkle. Which was the truth, she asked herself as she looked down at the unadorned shell, and which the illusion? Where was the line between the two? Or did the two just blend into each other? Where did the shell stop and Illyria begin? This was her form now, she decided. As much as she disliked the cold truth, she was the shell now; there was no longer any other self to which she could make claim. The shell was no longer Winifred Burkle, for she was dead. The shell was Illyria.

But Illyria was still alone.

  
* * * * *  
__

** _Eve_ **

Across the street from St. Anne's Episcopal Church in downtown L.A., there stood a small and rather dingy diner. Word on the street was that the owner of the diner was willing to pay out under the table to any prospective waitress with blonde hair, a petite figure, and a pretty face. Word on the street was right.

For example, six years ago there had been a petite blonde sixteen-year-old whose nametag had only read "Anne." Who she had been beyond that, no one knew, and no one had ever found out. No one cared. This summer, it was a different blonde girl (older) and a different name on the nametag, but the story was the same. The story was always the same. A nice girl decides to or needs to give up the life and identity she once had, and become invisible. This diner was the place such girls found their way to.

* * * * *

Across the street, the church bells began to ring. They were clearly having a funeral, Eve could tell, because the people who now streamed out of the church were all dressed in black. Eve couldn't help but think about Lindsey. He never had a funeral, and never would. His body had been disposed of (she didn't know by whom-—someone with Wolfram and Hart?) quickly and silently. It was just as well, perhaps. Besides Eve, who would have gone to mourn? He had died alone and—-except for Eve-—unloved. Just like, with Lindsey gone, Eve now was.

Two people, probably husband and wife, entered. They had clearly just come from the funeral, as they were both dressed in black. Expensive fabrics, even. Eve knew there was only one reason why people who could afford to be dressed like that came to a place like this to eat—it was because they were cheap. She knew not to expect a big tip.  
They were both older, perhaps in their seventies. The woman was somewhat frail, but the man looked like he let nothing get in his way, not even the ravages of time.

"Can I get you anything?"

The man looked at the woman. "What are you getting, Delores?" he asked.

"I think I'll just have a bowl of tomato soup, Roger," the woman answered him.

Roger looked at Eve as she wrote the woman's order down.

"And you, sir?" The man ordered a chicken salad sandwich and an iced tea.

_Cheap_, she thought. Definitely plan for a small tip.

When she brought back the food, the two of them seemed to be discussing the funeral. "I don't know why the preacher had to say all of those things," said Roger. "Made him out to be some sort of hero." The contempt in the old man's voice was unmistakable, and Eve loss no time in getting away from their table as fast as she could. She stopped back two or three times before they left to make sure they didn't want or need anything else, but they never did.

The bill came to $9.67. On the table, they had left a dollar, a quarter, and a dime.

_Oh well_, she thought as she pocketed the change. When you were all alone, every little bit counted.

**Author's Note:**

> [38+ Fanfiction.Net Reviews](http://www.fanfiction.net/r/1879174/) | [LJ/DW Comments (Part I)](http://alixtii.dreamwidth.org/1388.html#comments) | [LJ/DW Comments (Part II)](http://alixtii.dreamwidth.org/26111.html#comments)


End file.
